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Drill Sharpeners

ahowudoon

Plastic
Joined
Dec 29, 2001
Location
Chicago Heights, IL, USA
We are considering purchasing a drill sharpener. Does anyone have any suggestions or recomendations as to brand or model. We would like to be able to sharpen drills at least up to 1" if not more. Any information is appreciated. Thanks.
 
What are you doing? How many drills, how often? It doesn't take long to learn to sharpen drills by hand on a grinder, and the bigger they are, the easier it is. For little stuff I use a Drill Doctor. Results are good, but it's cheap plastic, with a miniature wheel and probably would not stand up to any but the lightest of production shops.
 
I personally do not like the Drill Doctor. If you know what a sharpened drill looks like,you'll be ok with it. I work in a small shop and we ordered one thinking it would be great for the guys who don't know how to sharpen a drill by hand. I can't get a consistant point on it no matter what. I went out of town for a few days and a guy decided to go thru the box and sharpen bits. Needless to say I had a box of worthless 'sharp' bits when I bot back. I used to use a sharpener that the drill sat in a 'V' channel and you swung the drill side to side on the side of the wheel. Sorry I don't know the name. Look at Enco or the MSC catalog(or mscdirect.com)
Paul in OKC
 
We use an old (1920's era) drill sharpener attachment on our bench grinder.
It uses a V-shaped cradle as a tool rest, and another V-shaped cradle that slides, to put the drill in. You can set the point angle, cutting edge angle, and relief angle relatively easily.
Once you get the feel of it, it works great.
It has different sized V-cradles to handle drills from 1/8" up to 2" in diameter, and 14" long.
 
We had a G&L Winslow drill grinder that was REALLY slick, but the company gave it away when they decided to "farm out" all the drill sharpening. They have, or at least had a few different models, which I believe are 25K-50K. What we have now is a Darex model 1500? (totally unsure of the model number but I can look tomorow if you want it). It's nothing like the G&L, but "industrial" compared to the plastic models Darex sells at Home Depot. It does make a nice split point. It's slow going on larger drills though, and they get hot quick, so you need to keep dipping them in a bucket of coolant. I'de still recommend it, IF you don't plan on sharpening a lot of drills.
 
I've been trying to learn how to sharpen by hand, but I don't do it quite consistantly enough. I have been checking into the Darex website, and I'm thinking of going with one of their models. The trouble is, we'll still end up farming out some of our bits. We carry bits from 1/8 through about 3". The really big guys don't get used quite as often, but when they do, they typically need to be sent out at the end of the job for sharpening. Right now, I'd say we sharpen around 8-10 bits a week, sometimes more, sometimes less, depending of course on how busy we are. Thanks for all your input.
 
I think we're using the Darex SP. It does split points, which I like. It IS handy. Get's used a lot when drilling deep holes and drills need a touch-up. Can't put the job on hold to wait for farmed out resharpening. IMHO, a worthwhile investment for the sizes of drills that get used the most. We had to learn to sharpen by hand back in tech school. You can get pretty good at it but it takes lots of practice and still isn't real quick. Also tough on small drills. We have twist drills up to 2", but to be honest the sizes over 1" don't get used much. Spade drills...short or long shanks, straight or MT available. Still need to resharpen those. Farm out or get the jig to do it yourself.

Originally posted by ahowudoon:
I've been trying to learn how to sharpen by hand, but I don't do it quite consistantly enough. I have been checking into the Darex website, and I'm thinking of going with one of their models. The trouble is, we'll still end up farming out some of our bits. We carry bits from 1/8 through about 3". The really big guys don't get used quite as often, but when they do, they typically need to be sent out at the end of the job for sharpening. Right now, I'd say we sharpen around 8-10 bits a week, sometimes more, sometimes less, depending of course on how busy we are. Thanks for all your input.
 
Sharpening drill bits is a bit of an art, one that gets easier with practice.

Get a drill point gage and some washers, dress up the grinding wheel and practice.

A common washer is a most handy thing to use when sharpening a drill bit. Use one with an ID of about 2/3 diameter of bit, when placed on end of bit one can clearly observe if cutting lips will cut, excessive clearance angle can also be observed with this washer.

Sharpening drill bits really isn't that hard, larger ones are easier if you have a big enough rock to grind them on.

Want to have fun, sharpen some real small ones, say #57, a jewelers loupe and an oilstone works.

Bits I have the most problem with are left handed ones, I have to twist my tail end around slideways and hold my mouth the other dirrection. Just right unnatural those left handed things.

I have to admit, we have a Black Diamond sharpener at work, I like it and use it, but it only goes to 1/2. It also won't sharpen really small bits, you know, the one you need to drill out that orifice right now for the machine that's waiting.

It gets easier. Try the washer trick, it works well for observing clearance angle.
 
I've sharpened a lot of drills on my 1x42" belt grinder. It grinds cooler than my wheel grinders,but to split the points,ya gotta use the wheels. A 2" belt would be nice for the larger size drills,bigger than 1". Practice and good eyes helps a bunch! Keep trying. Take a good look at a new drill,keep the same angles and if you're drilling material that the drill hogs in,use a stone and flatten the cutting edge,slightly.
 
I have a Drill Doctor (#250) that I've had excellent results with. Am I highly skilled, can follow directions, or just lucky? I don't know, but I've never had a drill that didn't cut perfectly after a pass thru the "Doctor". They're not for production work, but for occasional sharpenings (as in HSM) it works great.
 
We have a Darex M3 I think. It took some getting used to, but now I can do a much better job of sharpening than I ever could by hand.

I get consistent results, both sides the same.

It is a lot of money, and you have to sharpen a whole bunch of drill bits to pay for it.

Mike L
 
I have one of those Atlas sharpeners and need the instructions for it. Anyone know where I can get a copy?
 
Have you tried Clausing? They still supply manuals for many of the the old Atlas tools & accesories.

Call the number in the service link at:

www.clausing-industrial.com

They sell manuals at a nominal fee, take credit cards and ship promptly. Email generally takes a few days for a response, so it's often better to call.

Mike, near Chicago
 
If you can find a Brierley drill grinder used on e-bay or such, you will find it does one of the best jobs of sharpening drills of any machine made. It uses a precision 6-jaw chuck instead of all the collets/sleeves/adapters so common to other brands. The machines are expensive but sometimes can be bought under $500 on ebay if someone does not know what they have. Model ZB-25 goes up to 1" drills
Model ZB-32 goes up to 1&1/4" drills
The machines can also split points, web thin, etc with the proper attachments. They are simple, fast & easy to operate - a must in most job shops. We have a ZB-32 & use it constantly - no more oversize holes because someone did not know what they were doing. It will also sharpen LH drills, core drills, flat bottom drills, & others with proper cams.
 
I recently sold an Avyac, French manuf. drill grinder, which seemed similar to the Brierly design. This was a 1990 model and it went for $1,850. I think it cost about $8,000 new.

avyac3.jpg
 
I played with the Drill Doctor that a farmer friend of mine bought. After about 1/2 hour I was able to turn out nicely sharpened bits that worked very well. I'm curious how long the grinding wheel will last with average hobby-type usage.

Jeremy
http://www.wheatfarm.com
 
We have a Darex drill sharpener at work. A bit pricey for the home shop at just over $2000, but it is quick and easy to use, and has a splt point feature.

We used to have to drill 0.020" vent holes in punches at work with a #76 drill on a benchtop micro drill press. Try sharpening one of those. 8-0 We have an EDM drill to do this job now, and are thankful for it.
 
Jeremy,
I have been looking into a drill doctor and I wanted to know the same infomation as you did Drill Doctor say it will last for about 200 drill sharpenings, but they make a coarser wheel for 1/2"-3/4" now, so it doesn't take all day to sharpen these sizes.


Originally posted by Jeremy:
I played with the Drill Doctor that a farmer friend of mine bought. After about 1/2 hour I was able to turn out nicely sharpened bits that worked very well. I'm curious how long the grinding wheel will last with average hobby-type usage.

Jeremy
http://www.wheatfarm.com
 








 
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